Many businesses are sending bills or statements to their customers on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, or even daily basis. For example, a utility company may send millions of bills to their customers every month. As another example, a brokerage firm or other financial institution may send thousands of trade confirmations to their customers, every business day. In either example, each document provides information that is both important to the customer and/or a means of revenue collection for the company.
And the information is time sensitive. Customers need to have current information regarding their accounts, and companies will not receive payment until their bills are sent. There may also be legal reasons why a customer needs to receive a communication within a certain period of time
Today, the bulk of such mission-critical time-sensitive materials still take the form of “paper-based” communication, such as statements and bills mailed via a postal service or competitive delivery provider. Traditional mail systems, however, are not foolproof. There are many events and circumstances that can cause a delay in sending out bills and statements via traditional paper-based mail. Examples include damage to the mail processing or finishing equipment due to a building collapse, fire or water damage, etc. Another example is a company upgrading their systems and having delays, which cause the document finishing equipment and/or other mailing equipment to not be up and running in time for their next delivery cycle.
Events and circumstances like these have caused companies to secure a backup solution, or insurance plan, for communicating their business critical information with their customers. Today, disaster recovery plans are limited to using another traditional mailing service that would not encounter the same disaster, as a backup for sending the normal bills and statements. However, the backup often is not particularly efficient. There may be problems and delays is switching-over and bringing the back-up mail production and delivery service up to capacity. The speed/capacity of the back-up systems may not be nearly as great as the normal systems, or the backup system may become overloaded if several client companies experience disaster(s) at about the same time. The disaster recovery service provider may only have plain paper stock and/or envelope stock, not pre-printed custom materials normally used by the client company. These and other problems with the backup system cause delays in distribution and attendant delays in the necessary responses by customers.
Also, the traditional back-up approach requires equipment, manpower, space, etc. that is in many ways a complete duplicate of the normal resources. Although some companies may effectively share the backup, for example, by subscribing to backup services offered by a commercial provider, still the duplicate resources may often sit idle. As a result, the company or companies paying for the backup must carry the high equipment and personnel costs on an ongoing basis, even though they are seldom used. Also, a backup system that is effective for one company may not be effective for another company having different types of documents to mail to customers.
Hence a need exists for an enhanced technique for providing disaster recovery for presentment systems for bills, statements and the like. An enhanced disaster recovery solution should be readily adaptable to virtually any company's documents and distribution needs. Further, as much as possible, the equipment should not duplicate existing hard copy processing systems, should be easy to bring on-line, and should not require unduly extensive idle back-up resources.